The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Last year I bought Comcast's NBA League Pass, which gave me access to the entire season of NBA basketball games. My brother egged me on to order it so he could use my online login and watch streaming games at home in Michigan (his cable provider didn't offer League Pass). A couple weeks ago I received a letter from Comcast informing me that they've auto-renewed me for NBA League Pass this year and that if I don't want to renew I'd have to cancel. I asked my brother if he wanted it again this year and he said that he didn't really want to shell out the money for it, so I could go ahead and cancel it if I wasn't going to use it.

About a week and a half ago I called Comcast to cancel League Pass. The lovely automated voice informed me that "Current...wait time...is...forty...five...minutes." Not wanting to listen to smooth jazz for 3/4 of an hour, I hung up. A few days later I called again to cancel. The office was closed. No big deal, I'd just call again later. On Monday I got into work and called Comcast a third time. After 20 minutes of easy listening, I finally got through.

While cradling the phone against my shoulder and reading through YOUmoz entries, I casually explained to the Comcast rep that I wanted to cancel League Pass this year since I wasn't going to use it. She put me on hold so she could pull up my account. After a few minutes she came back and cheerfully informed me that I couldn't cancel my subscription since the NBA season had already started. I was confused. Since the season started four days ago I was no longer able to cancel 8 months of games that I wasn't going to watch?

My coworkers couldn't help but listen as my conversation with the Comcast rep grew more heated and my voice carried across the office. I told her that this is ridiculous and that I wasn't going to pay $170 for a whole season of games I wasn't going to watch, simply because I was late in canceling by 4 days. I told her how I tried calling twice before but couldn't get through, and I asked if she could at least prorate the return. She said that she was unable to cancel and that the subscription was setup like an On-Demand movie. "If you order a movie On-Demand, you can't cancel it halfway through the movie and get a refund." I told her that's not a valid analogy because she's comparing one movie to an 80+ game season. Nonetheless, she wouldn't budge. I repeatedly asked to speak to a supervisor and she said that one wasn't available. She promised that she'd have one call me back later (nobody did) and happily asked if there was anything else she could do for me. I said "Obviously not," hung up the phone, and peppered the office air with a combination of "Comcast" and various expletives.

While I had been chatting with Not At All Helpful Comcast Rep on the phone, I happened to Twitter the following:

To my surprise, after I hung up and was gearing up to unleash some major Comcast hate all over the Internet, I received this response:

I responded to ComcastBill in 3 tweets, relaying what happened within the confines of 140 characters. Meanwhile, a number of my Twitter buddies rallied in support of my cause:

Tom Schmitz retweets my complaint

DJ Paisley clamors for a refund

Todd recommends I reach out to another Comcast rep on Twitter

After some back and forths with ComcastBill, I gave him my account information and he was quiet for a bit. After a while, he privately messaged me with this:

Needless to say, I was once again a happy happy Comcast customer.

I'm not much of a Twitter geek--I use it pretty sporadically and am not one to typically sing its praises and gush about how it's the best thing EVAR. However, I was extremely impressed with how Comcast leveraged Twitter to reach out to its customers and efficiently manage their reputation. After my call with the Comcast rep I was angry and more than prepared to talk some serious smack about Comcast and their ridiculous policies and lack of customer appreciation. ComcastBill was able to instantly change my opinion of Comcast by providing me with quick customer service and assure me that he was looking into my problem. He remained prompt, pleasant, helpful, and understanding, which all equated to a positive customer experience for me.

Sure, Twitter's great for silly stuff like "What should I have for lunch?" and "My coworker's buttcrack is sticking out haha," but the service is also good for brand monitoring, customer service, and reputation management. Clearly ComcastBill monitors Twitter for mentions of the Comcast brand and immediately responds to relevant tweets in order to provide instant customer service and diffuse any negative situations. If there were no Comcast reps on Twitter, nobody would have seen the hate-orade I'd have unleashed. Negative experiences can often spread from word of mouth or Twitter to nasty blog posts to large-scale problems like Consumerist or RipOffReport mentions, resulting in a reputation management nightmare. Via Twitter, Comcast was able to instantly diffuse the situation and minimize any criticism of their brand and service.

Even if you're not all about hopping on the Twitter train, it may be a good idea to register an account that's linked to your company or brand so that you can monitor any mentions, extend your customer service, and exercise some quick reputation management. Summize, er, I mean Twitter Search is a great tool that allows you to search for your brand or other keywords and see who's talking about you right now.

The above screenshot is a list of tweets that mention SEOmoz. After analyzing what people are saying I'm already able to identify various action points:

Someone asked if our tools are worth the steep price. We can reach out to this person and provide him with some information about our tools and maybe even offer him a free trial.

Another person commented that our Events Calendar has been discontinued and is bummed because he really liked that feature. Knowing that a number of people enjoyed using the Events Calendar is really valuable because it prompts us to reconsider the Events Calendar and brainstorm whether or not we should reinstate it and think of ways to improve it.

Someone shared the link to his first YOUmoz post. Here we could reach out to our YOUmoz authors and thank them for their contributions, which will hopefully encourage them to keep contributing. The same goes for Marketplace additions--we should thank people for creating new profiles.

Below the screenshot fold someone commented that he found some SEOmoz links pointing to malware. Because someone has identified these for us, we can take immediate action and remove them.

Also under the fold is a request to add a "skip to content" link for mobile users. Website feedback is great and should definitely be considered.

Someone else asked about our Pubcon party and was wondering what time it started. Here we can helpfully provide answers. :)

Just by looking at the first page of Twitter results for "SEOmoz" I was able to identify half a dozen customer service action points. By keeping active and aware of our brand mentions, we should be able to go above and beyond with customer service, site improvements, and user engagement. Comcast showed me that being active on Twitter serves a great business purpose as well as provides personal entertainment. I've learned a valuable lesson and will try to be a more active brand evangelist on Twitter in the future.

What about you guys? Do you use Twitter to monitor your brand and provide customer service, or do you have any experience engaging in a conversation with a brand evangelist or customer service rep for another company?

About rebecca —
Rebecca Kelley is the content marketing manager for Intego, a Mac software company. She also guest-blogs/freelances at various places and runs a couple hobby blogs for shits and giggles.

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Comments
38

Call it a hunch, but I think because the Twitter (the internet) gives you the power to publically complain about a product and reach a far wider audience, more so than you could with normal word'a'mouth, Comcast may have sprung in to action to help you out.

I think your right. I think that a rant like this is a lot more appropriate on the web than say filing a ripoffreport. (twitches from past seo jobs). If you complain for nothing on twitter, you sometimes get people countering you in replies.

But if your in the right (like this case), people are happy to point you in the right direction.

Company ethics and reputation management are something I've given thought to recently. I think one of the reasons for ethics (both for an individual and a corporation) is an inability to correctly evaluate the probability of large, complex, and subtle effects to reputation. It is much easier to work with entities that proclaim and then rigidly follow a set of ethics, and so as a company loses that reputation, it hurts their business in all sorts of subtle ways.

To the extent this sounds cynical, I think it is just the opposite. Not only is it good to have principles for their direct effects, but the complexity of the world also tends to enforce the concept karma - and that makes the world a bit more just.

First let me say that this absolutely should have been handled during the call. We agree with that feedback. Twitter itself is a good place to listen, and as a service team my team simply wants to help too. We are there to listen, in the same manner that we listen in forums, blogs, and even in person as part of focus groups. We are dedicated to improving the experience for all Customers.

In terms of scalability I would definitely say it is possible. It takes organization and communication, but it can be done. Twitter started with myself, and since then many members of my team have joined.

Thank you for the positive feedback regarding Bill. It is great to see my team get this well deserved recognition.

Due to the type of software my company provides, I see entire libraries of books, white papers, case studies, you name it, all saying the same thing:

Customer service is the only brand differentiator there is these days. Everything is commoditized and has competition so price points and quality differences are very difficult to market on now.

Also there is the old adage of a happy customer telling an average of 2 friends and an angry customer telling 10. But now it is much more than 10, it is much more public, and once on the web, lives forever. Even though Comcast finally resolved the issue, the fact remains that either the phone agent didn't want to lose a sale, was not empowered to actually do anything for the account or did not think it mattered what she said, having never been coached about the above old adage in the computer age.

Comcast may be used to having very little competition, but as technology becomes more and more sophisticated, the more competitiion there will be for the same customers. The time to change corporate culture is now.....while there is still a corporation.

It would be great, however, if ComcastBill would relay his position that it's "all about doing what's right if it's a legit issue" to Comcast's Customer Service reps. I'm glad this story had a happy ending but I'm not prepared to let Comcast off the hook quite so easily.

THanks Rebecca, so funny, same thing happened to me with another company. But it took a little longer for them to realize it.

I tweeted about being annoyed with a Business.com Account Rep one day. The situation was resolved a few days later to my satisfaction and I thought no more about it. 20 days after the tweet, the Manager on my account called me asking if everything was okay. She wanted to know if our account was going well and if I was satisfied. After few minutes she finally noted that she called because her VP saw my tweet!

I was very impressed and happy to see them paying attention. I have used this as an example since then of why a wide variety of companies need to be proactive about twitter and other social media networks.

While I have to applaud them for the innovative nature of that customer service campaign, Comcast’s overall customer satisfaction ratings have proven to be pretty low. Makes me glad to be an employee of DISH Network, where I see first hand the continuous striving effort to improve the customer experience. I found this great new site too, it gives some fair breakdowns of all the most popular TV services and while DISH doesn’t pull ahead in every category the ratings are overall very good. You should check it out yourself at www.BestTVForMe.com

I don't think your story affirms the utility of Twitter, but rather reveals the imperfections in Comcast's customer service. Contacting a company until you get a service rep who is actually helpful is old news; Twitter just made is easier/faster to work around Comcast's setup.

So the answer isn't social media, it's better and more consistent service, irrespective of media, isn't it?

Nice case-study. The use of Twitter and customer feedback sites like Get Satisfaction are extremely valuable tools when it comes to these types of situations. There was an article in Fortune magazine earlier this year about this exact use of Twitter by Blip.tv. i wrote a review here.

Love it! I think that speaks volumes for the power of Online Reputation Management. I guess better late then never.

I was on the phone with a company several times trying to cancel my services. Every time I did I was told it was canceled just to receive another bill or service reminder.... I called their regional office and pointed out that I reviewed complaints about them online and I am apparently not the one with this issue and a pattern was becoming apparent..... Account was canceled and I got written confirmation in the mail.

As for my clients: we finally bit the bullet and solicit feedback and make it public. Its painful to make the move but it has been a tremendously good experience. Causes you not to stick your head in the sand; you realize that you are not loosing just one customer over a complaint but hundreds or thousands of potential customers reading the reviews online; forces you to fix the issue and provide the best customer service you can. Companies that don't know or accepted the fact that reputation management is huge will have so many bad reviews online it'll be hard to remedy.

But they now are very proactive in customer service, instead of having to do damage control online like your case.

Good for the customer to be able to review; good for the company to stay on their toes re: service.

I did just that a couple of weeks ago, after struggling with the Microsoft Xbox Support web site, to get my soon to be step son's Microsoft Xbox repaired. My twitter post automatically updates my Linkedin.com, and Facebook status. Within minutes a couple of my old co-workers who are now senior executives at Microsoft responded with a special 800 number and Microsoft Product Suppport access key that took me to the front of the line. Now that is what I call customer service!

Twitter rocks for a lot of reasons. Business reasons are what most people need to hear to engage.

I had an issue with Comcast for months. I tweeted about it. Frank reached out. It took some time escalation and persistance, but eventually Comcast found they needed to replace the line from the pole to my house. I now have the phone number of the regional service director. Once I even called him about an outage in the area so fast that he had not been alerted. Gues I am on the 'puter too much.

RichardatDell is another Twitter super star in my book.

Beyone these large corp. examples, I have found colleagues and clients on Twitter and even have money in the bank due to Twitter.

There are now hundreds of Twitter related apps or mashups. The latest with promise is www.tweetworks.com which allows you to form public or private groups

Twitter is a communications medium, like fax, phone, in person networking, IRC or whatever. Use what works for you. Twitter works for me.

We got the seo marketing team together at the conference at 18 truman irvine at the sears law building. Steven and Mike had the management display and the attorney group had the podium. The next meeting on asset management and legal issues. 8 pm mike and the internet tags with searsatty

Twitter seems cutting edge to many people and it is good to see that companies are reaching out to take advantage of the tools they have. We see the same thing with companies patrolling (hopefully via search tools) review sites and then addressing the issue.

Good post. From someone who both talks about lunch as well as giving assistance and working with people in the search industry, I see a lot of potential here. I think companies need to becareful when they are strategizing how to use twitter, but it can be super useful for the one-to-many relationships.

Very impressive action on Comcast's part. Perhaps I will try it with Direct TV. I am dreading the wait on the phone to figure out what either my teenage son or my husband ordered that they 'can't remember' that costs so much!

I had not been monitoring my company on twitter and was happy to see there were no complaints. Perhaps it would be nice to have a few tweets about us, but not if they are negative. Thanks for the post!

That is a really amazing experience. Though it does make me wonder how much time ComcastBill spends on Twitter. Does he sit at his cube and search for "comcast" for 8 hours looking for troublesome posts? It almost seems like it, since he replied 10 minutes after your initial post.

Funnily enough I went to a trade show recently for IT companies in New Brunswick, where a guy from a company called Radian6 made a keynote speech. They offer social media monitoring services and emphasized this as being a way for companies to monitor their brands, what customers are saying about them and handle issues like the one you had with Comcast.

Please note: I am in no way affiliated with Radian6, I just think they seem pretty good.

Would it have been better to solve it on the phone? If someone was going to Twitter upset at Comcast, chances are someone would Twitter that it was solved successfully on Comcast which could reach hundreds of people. Solving it on the phone seems like it would have been good customer service, solving it on Twitter seems like good crisis management

Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I think people tend to complain more often than praise, especially when it comes to something they're paying for.

As for the service difference on Twitter vs the phone it's pretty obvious. Twitter is public print. Complain there and anyone can read about it. Complain on the phone and typically you're the only one listening to your complaints, unless you really go the extra mile.

Frank is a good friend and does an awesome job. I was talking to Randy at his Session at Pubcon and we discussed this post.

I completely agree that a brand, or any company, should listen to their customers carefully, on blogs, forums and Twitter – in other words, wherever they might be talking about you and looking for solutions. Your post about your experience with Frank @comcastcares is a great example of that.

We at Network Solutions have also been helping customers and the community through our Twitter account @netsolcares as well as monitoring and responding on blogs and forums. We have been able to remedy some potentially bad situations in a hurry. We are completely sold on doing business this way and going beyond just customer service reponse to also be of service to the entire community. For instance, a few weeks ago we highlighted some smart experts in the wider community through our Solutions Stars Video series covering Web design and development, which are topics about which we get lots of questions. All without a hard sell.

It does require a long view though, and a commitment to really talking with your customers rather than at them.